


Educational Conversations

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Gen, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 09:01:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2726546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I hoped for...” Bastila looked down. “Advice on a personal matter. About whether something was abnormal."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Educational Conversations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forgetcanon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgetcanon/gifts).



> Written upon request a month and a half late. (Er, sorry.) 
> 
> Also, the way it comes up isn't all that obvious, but this contains racebent (Asian) Bastila, in accordance with her original concept art and (Chinese) last name. It will probably be more explicit in the narration at some point, since this is set in a wider alternate universe. The only other important information is that the main divergence point is the mind wipe failing to take on Revan, and canon outside KOTOR is totally disregarded.

Revan woke up from dreams about telling Master Zhar she was leaving the Order for the first time in ten years, and shuddered, trying to place herself.

The near plastic texture of the sheets under her meant ship, along with the narrow bunk. The feel of the Force around her – heavy with emotions and hopes and life, but relatively short on power – meant she wasn't around Force users, Sith or Jedi. The set up of the room meant the Ebon Hawk, and she knew where she was again.

More focused, she touched her bond with Shan briefly, registered the waves of shame and guilt, and realized why her mind had chosen that  dream.

I don't have a sense of responsibility here, she told herself. These aren't _my_ soldiers. I am a _Sith Lord._

She was already swinging her legs out of bed. It was impossible not to care about a bond mate. As for the rest of the crew... Well, she'd worry about that later.

She threw on the extremely battered Republic fatigues she was wearing as a more acceptable alternative to Jedi robes, decided bringing her lightsaber would be unnecessarily hostile and if she ended up in a fight with Bastila there was no point in not using her other Force abilities, and started out towards Bastila.

Revan found the Jedi Padawan sitting in the tiny ship's kitchen, staring into a mug of caf that looked like it had gone cold a long time ago.

“Kid,” she said cautiously, moving to lean against the counter and surreptitiously checking her eyes hadn't gone gold from the dream's emotions in her reflection on the heating unit's glass front.

Bastila jumped with a comical clatter. “Sam!”

“Didn't see me come in?” Revan smiled sympathetically and didn't point out that Bastila should have been able to feel where she was from across the ship.

“I thought you were asleep?”

There was a shrill note in her voice like someone on the edge of hysteria. Revan considered leaving her alone, but bad enough to wake her up was probably bad enough it needed to be dealt with for everyone on the ship's sanity. “I was. Do you want to talk?”

“Talk?” Bastila looked hounded. “About what?”

Revan wondered how much of this was whatever Shan had actually been worrying about and how much was her blatant discomfort with Revan made worse by her mood. Sameela Fergay, had she been real, would probably have taken Shan for either having a serious stick up her ass or a shell shock case waiting to go to pieces. As it was, she felt a combination of anger with the Jedi Council for the whole situation and what was becoming alarmingly like sympathy for Shan. “How about you tell me? I felt you from across the ship, Bastila.” She consciously softened her tone. “It woke me. What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing's wrong, of course.” Bastila smiled forcibly, seemed to register the caf as an excuse to stop talking, and spluttered and coughed when she sipped from it.

“I think that went cold before the cockpit shift changed last. Let me make a new pot.” Revan leaned over, pretended not to notice the way Bastila shrank from her – shit, did the kid think Revan was going to go mad and attack her? – and snagged the mug to take it to the sink. “You should talk,” she added. “If not to me, to one of the others. It'll help, and we can't afford distractions right now.”

Then she went quiet and focused on working the caf maker and paying careful attention to the emotions flickering across the bond. Bastila had clammed up tightly, but she didn't have the experience to keep everything out. It was less like the icy wall Revan had learned out of necessity during the war, and more like a barricaded door. But doors had key holes and space under them, and she could see the general tenor of her emotions like light flickering and changing color.

Mostly, there was the shame and the guilt. Guilt had flared a moment ago, probably at Revan's comment about distractions. Conflicted emotions, longing, and coming to a decision...

“You probably can't help,” Bastila said. “You haven't been a Jedi long, Sam, and much of the formal doctrine was skipped in your training.”

“Give me a try anyway. I might not have all the philosophy down, but at least I haven't been fighting the problem so long I can't see it straight anymore. You can always talk to Juhani or Jolee if I can't help.” Revan dumped out the caf and scrubbed at the sticky grounds in the bottom before dumping it in the sonic washer.

“You don't have to do my dishes,” Bastila said.

“Shan, get to the point.” She got out two more mugs for when the caf finished then sat down across the table from her, awkwardly folding her legs to fit under the cramped table. “You didn't wake me up with waves of shame because you were worried about the chore schedule.”

Bastila flushed and looked down. Revan stared at the top of her head. They were in a deadlock for moments of silence before Bastila said, “May I ask a personal question?”

“Go ahead,” she said, taking a moment to be grateful she'd managed to establish that the Council had only given Bastila basic biographical details about her. (Which made sense, as seeming to know her entire life as well as she did would have made any persona made of more than cardboard as suspicious as hell.)

“Have you ever been--” she hesitated, biting her lip, before asking “Involved with someone before? In a romantic fashion?”

Revan considered this for a moment, and futilely hoped that she wasn't about to embark on a conversation about breaking vows of chastity. “Yeah, a few times. Was married once.” She reached up to touch the place where her dog tags hung under her shirt automatically, and was briefly thrown by both the shape – Republic dog tags were rectangles, not square like the Sith ones or circular like the Mandalorian era issue – and the lack of a ring on the chain alongside them.

“Really?” Bastila frowned. “I didn't know that.”

“Not in my records,” she said agreeably, leaning back. “Wasn't legal anyway,” she improvised. “Not according to the Republic.” Maybe she could make Sameela's fictional spouse based off of memories of Meetra. At least that pain was older, and she was _not_ going to lose herself in _how could he betray me_ and _I loved him_ in the middle of this. _Through passion, I gain strength._ “Why do you ask?”

“I hoped for...” Bastila looked down. “Advice on a personal matter. About whether something was abnormal. Why would your marriage not be recognized by the Republic?”

“Because the Republic bases marriage on the theoretical possibility of reproduction, and human women can't have children with other women. At least, that's the legal argument. Doesn't make a lot of sense,” Revan continued, watching Bastila's panic spike in morbid fascination, “When not everyone even has kids, and couples who are infertile can marry, and couples who can't have kids can adopt, but as far as I know that's supposed to be why.”

Bastila nodded, swallowed desperately, and appeared to rally with great effort. “That's why human marriages have to be monogamous to be recognized, right? Because humans reproduce monogamously?”

“According to the Republic.” Revan shrugged. “There are planets that recognize various forms of polygamy. And marriage between two women or two men. And additional options, for that matter.”

“Additional options?” Bastila blinked.

Revan decided that they were getting off topic. “That's kind of beside the point. What did you want to ask me about?” Between 'whether something was abnormal,' and the rising panic – that was starting to look like a flashing alarm from under the door – she suspected the first part had been entirely on point, however.

“You were married to a woman?”

“Yes,” Revan lied. If Meetra hadn't been too damn wrapped up in how they were breaking their vows, she might have been. “Is this a problem?”

“No, I, ah. Ahem. And that's – normal?” Bastila's eyes were wide and nervous.

“It depends on where you are,” Revan said, teenage interest in anthropology textbooks flaring. “Where I was raised, it was totally accepted – my people were as confused as hell by that about the Republic, actually. There are planets where you have recent rights gains, or marginal but accepted positions – limited marital benefits, for instance, or tolerance as long as you don't flaunt it publicly. There are planets where it's illegal to have sex. But if you mean psychologically, it's completely normal variation.”

She expected Bastila to ask where she had been raised, and briefly wished she had thought to read about Deralia to supplement the subjects the Council considered knowledge of necessary, but instead Shan said, “That was... sort of what I wanted to ask you about?”

Careful. Soft tone, sympathetic eyes. “Mhmm?”

“I – I'm not...” Bastila looked down again.

The caf machine chimed and Revan got up to get it. “Are you interested in women?” she asked, taking pity on her.  
  
“Yes.” The word came out as a whisper.

The bond flooded with fear; Revan felt her heart jump and grabbed onto the Force to calm herself down. “Okay.” She sat down. “Look at me, kid?”

“I'm not a kid,” Bastila muttered defensively, hugging herself.

“Yeah, Mission says that too. You're a legal adult, but I've got a good decade on you.” Revan took a drink, considering where to start. “Anyway. It's normal, there's nothing wrong with you, and you don't need to be fixed. What else do you need to know?”

“Else?” Bastila croaked.

“Politics, vocabulary, legal status, sexual education...?” She shrugged elaborately.

“We're celibate,” Shan said rapidly. “The Jedi. I mean. So it shouldn't matter that much anyway.”

“It matters,” Revan disagreed. “If only because there are planets where admitting to that kind of attraction could get you arrested and possibly executed. Which would interfere slightly with your mission.”

“ _Executed?_ ” Bastila gaped, and Revan regretted that she hadn't woken up Carth to have this talk instead of her.

“Yeah. It happens. Not often, but it does happen.” She reached over to squeeze Shan's shoulder, and gratifyingly got a smile instead of a flinch. “I'll look up a list of planets where it's illegal later and you can go over it. But I'm jumping way ahead of myself. You're attracted to women?”  
“Like I said. Yes.” Bastila was red faced.

“Okay. Do you like men, too, or just women?”

“Just...” Bastila hesitated. “When we were apprentices, the other Padawans would talk about – you know. We aren't allowed to actually follow through, but speculating isn't against the Code, and it's expected when the emotions are new.”

Revan did know, personally, but she nodded like it was new information. “I see. So the other female apprentices had crushes on the male ones.”

“And I tried to – no one ever believed that I _didn't,_ I got called a stuck up and Vrook's pet and things because of it but no one noticed that there was this girl in our classes who I followed around everywhere, and there were these posters--” She cringed suddenly and buried her face in her hands, and Revan caught a single vivid mental image across the bond of her own masked figure in a Mandalorian era propaganda image she was vaguely familiar with.

Wasn't that an interesting development. Revan was definitely feeling sympathetic now – like she hadn't been for this whole conversation. Force bonds did that. So did being forced into close quarters with terrified new soldiers in over their heads with a striking resemblance to herself--

Oh. _Oh._ “Bastila, can I ask something?” she said.

“Yes?” The word came out muffled.

“Have you talked to – you were trained by Vrook, correct – about this?”

Shan nodded and flushed. “He told me that since I was celibate it didn't matter. And to just meditate on it.”

Bastila's constant, crushing insecurity, the Jedi Council's thinly veiled suspicion, and the fact that someone who had led Republic forces to victory in multiple crucial battles was still a Padawan suddenly made sense. A brilliant student with unusual Force powers and a gift for strategy, who was also a human female with certain distinctly _unusual_ proclivities that were already supposed by some to be a sign of criminal tendencies. They even looked somewhat similar, mostly a function of their shared race within humanity.

And Bastila had admired her, had certainly contraband in the Jedi enclave posters of her before she had turned. She must have been seen as Revan, version two – the Council's chance to make it right, _or_ repeat their mistakes with disastrous consequences. And then she had gone and Force bonded the very Sith Lord herself.

Revan had a headache. She ignored it. “Alright. I'm sorry, I was just thinking about something else. So, if you only like women, the word is lesbian. For men and women who like their own sex, it's gay. Lesbian is a noun, gay is an adjective – you're gay, or you're a lesbian. People who like both sexes are bisexual, that gets shortened to bi. I'm bisexual. Homosexual means the same thing as gay, but it's usually derogatory, especially if it's being used as a noun.”

“Okay.” Bastila straightened determinedly. “I'll remember.”

“Good. You should consider looking things up on the Holonet later. Maybe find some people to talk to.” She doubted Bastila would follow through on that immediately, but it might happen some day. “Now – I understand you're celibate, but you should know this anyway, even if it's just so you can advise other people. If you want, I can suggest an article, though.”

“This is the safe sex talk, isn't it?” Bastila smiled weakly.

“Mhmm. Let me think where to start.”

The ensuing conversation was probably a series of the things Revan had least expected to be saying to Bastila Shan in her life. Then again, the whole night could probably fit under that.

“Do you feel better?” she asked eventually, probing at the bond again and not trying to be sneaky or subtle this time. She carefully let only her concern – and Force damn it, that was real, that was concern, she _was a Sith Lord_ fuck this – show, but tentatively added threads of affection.

“Yeah.” Bastila smiled at her shyly and nudged her back through the bond. There was still shame showing through the cracks, but it was overshadowed by relief instead of guilt. “Thanks. I hope you can sleep now.”

“Come here,” Revan said, giving up, and got up to hug her.


End file.
